February 15th, 2008
The Dead, Dubliners and Guinness
Back in college, English was one half of my degree and like everyone who first grapples with critical ways of looking at texts, you get a tad carried away. Some theories pan out and you pick up marks : the correlation between flowers and death (or something similar) in Virginia Woolf, drawing parallels between Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, Tank Girl and Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses. Another one that existed in my head never (rightly) sneaked into an essay, but it was certainly trotted out in the UCD bar. I got it into my head thatn James Joyce’s Dubliners, as a collection, was a metaphor for a pint of Guinness. No Guinness was consumed in formulating said theory, it was more likely to be subsidised pints of beer.
Think about it: The first 14 stories are all chaotic, unsettled, bouncing off each other. And then everything settles to form, one perfect whole, with the final tale, ‘The Dead’. Even the metaphor of the white snow settling “on all the living and all the dead”, is not a million miles off a creamy head of a pint of plain. Totally insane of course, but I thought I’d share it, after being reminded of ‘The Dead’ when reading about Jeffery Eugenides hunt for the best short stories about love.
And then yesterday, when finally I got a chance to rummage around some of the many shortlisted Irish Blog Award nominees, I found a great piece about the story. John Self’s Asylum blog is a fellow nominee in Arts and Culture and his blog gathers some excellent reviews, including an essay on ‘The Dead’.
Whenever I’m asked to pick a favourite short short (a question as impossible to answer as “what kind of music do you like?”), ‘The Dead’ is my default offering. I read it in conjunction with a very similar but much overlooked work called Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Structurally, it has resisted pigeon-holing. Some say it’s a novel, while many thinks its a thematically linked collection of stand-alone short stories.
Needless to say, my Guinness theory doesn’t extend to Anderson’s book.
February 15th, 2008 at 11:04 am
The Dead wasn’t included in the Eugenides anthology in the end, which is a huge pity. It would’ve balanced it nicely. Love the Guinness analogy - never thought of the last line like that before. I think A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor, is my favourite short story though.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Ooh, I love serendipity - you’re the third person to recommend Winesburg, Ohio to me, which means it must become the subject of my next trolley dash through Amazon. Thanks for kindly linking to my blog too!
February 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Claire, it’s a pity it’s not included isn’t it? I wonder why it didn’t qualify, I think it’s a wonderful story about love - full of regret and memory. I like the way it compares Gretta’s differing experiences of love with Gabriel and Michael.
Overall, Flannery is my favourite short story writer. Have you ever read any Lorrie Moore?
John, you’re most welcome. Look forward to that review.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Sooo, you’re a UCD English head? Who’d a thunk
The pre-eminence of The Dead as a short story is illustrated very nicely in this William Boyd essay on the Short Story form that has kinda determined how I think about short stories now. http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1317930,00.html
I read Nabokov’s Spring at Fialta (and indeed re-read The Dead) on the strength of it. I recommend the former as one of those perfectly formed short stories that you only come across now and again.
I know you’re a fan of Birds of America Sinead, so no need to go on about Lorrie Moore to you. Its a testiment to her skill that her short story based in Ireland - where a character does the tourist thing with her mum - rang so incredibly through, especially for me in the depiction of crappy bed and breakfasts.
As to whether The Dead ultimately depicts a pint of Guiness - the darkness of the Liffey and the soot blackened buildings, upon which falls a layer of white freshly fallen snow - it’s as good a theory as any.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Sorry - ‘incredibly true’, of course. Yes, yes, I know, do they not teach spelling in college?
February 15th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Re-read The Dead recently and it’s even better the second time around. I’d probably have to pick a Carver, yates or Ford as my fave tho
February 16th, 2008 at 9:11 am
TGWAOF, Carver also amazing. Could you recommend some Yates and Ford. I’m sure you picked up the recent Granta Book of American short stories edited by Ford. He was modest enough not to include any of his own.
And also, just for you, from today’s Writer’s Almanac (Feb 16th).
“Today is the birthday of novelist Richard Ford, born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944. His trilogy of novels starring Frank Bascombe has won him popular and critical acclaim. The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995), and The Lay of the Land (2006) have all won various awards; Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1996.
Although many of his stories are set in the South, Ford has resisted critics’ efforts to label him as a “Southern” writer. In an interview with Harper’s he said, “Categorization (women’s writing, gay writing, Illinois writing) inflicts upon art exactly what art strives at its best never to inflict on itself: arbitrary and irrelevant limits, shelter from the widest consideration and judgment, [and] exclusion from general excellence.”
Ford has overcome a number of labels and difficulties in his life. His father died of a heart attack when he was 16. He was dyslexic as a child but majored in English at Michigan State University. He attempted to pursue a number of alternate career paths, even spending some time in law school, but Ford always came back to writing. Beginning in 1981, he wrote articles for Inside Sports magazine. When the publication went under, Ford accepted his wife Kristina’s challenge to “write a book about a happy man.” The Sportswriter was named one of the five best books of 1986 by Time magazine and went on to earn the PEN/Faulkner citation for fiction in 1987.”
February 16th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Donagh, Eugenides RAVES about Spring in Fialta in the article. I’ve only Nabokov novels, no short stories. Do you know which collection it’s in?
I remember reading that Boyd essay, although I’m still trying to get around to ‘Restless’.
Hurrah for Guinness theories.
February 16th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Ooh thanks for that Sinead
Feb 16th will have to go in the diary now!
Tbh pretty much the whole of Yates’ Collected Stories is gold (but I’m biased :D) Liars in Love though, would be his best collection of short fiction (it’s included in the collected obviously!), I always liked Regards at Home and Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired in particular.
Rock Springs is probably the best place to start with Ford’s short fiction. Though I still love him most for The Sportswriter
February 18th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I’ve read Dubliners 6 times. Your Guinness theory has legs, Sinead. Sherwood Anderson’s book is lovely, you’ll enjoy it.
My favorite short story authors are Beckett and Joyce tied, then Ms. O’Connor, and then William Trevor and Alice Munro.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hi Sinead,
I meant to get back to you about this. It might be in the Collected Short Stories, but I found in it in a collection of Modern Russian Short Stories that I had from years back.
However, its hardly surprising that its on the internet, freely available:
http://www.wordswiththoughts.com/Vladimir%20Nabokov%20-%20Spring%20in%20Fialta.htm